Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.​1186/​1475-2875-11-182) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Xue Liu, Zhi-Yong Tao contributed equally to this work.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Authors’ contributions

XL, ZYT drafted the manuscript. XL, ZYT and QF contributed expertise in the laboratory diagnosis and specie identification. XMW, HZ carried out data collection and epidemiological study. HX conceived this case report. HX, LC and JS contributed to case analysis. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

Abstract

In February 2011, a rare case of congenital Plasmodium vivax malaria was diagnosed in a temperate region of Central China. An infant developed intermittent fever 20 days after delivery. Since this occurred during the non-transmission winter season in a low malaria endemic region and the infant’s mother did not have a clear malaria history or showed malaria symptoms at the time of the delivery, malaria infection was not suspected at the beginning. Later, on suspicion of potential malignant haematological illness due to persistence of the fever, bone marrow smear was examined, which revealed infection by P. vivax parasite. This rare case of congenital vivax malaria underlines that malaria diagnosis might need to be included in the healthcare of neonates born in vivax-endemic areas.